[NBLUG/talk] Debian package dependency weirdness

[Lincoln Peters]

I seem to have figured out almost everything I need to know to run my
Debian system, but having installed GNOME 2 and Ximian Evolution (I'm
using both unstable and Ximian's repository), I am now getting the
following error every time I try to install something via apt-get:

Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
You might want to run `apt-get -f install' to correct these:
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
  evolution: Depends: libpisync0 but it is not going to be installed
E: Unmet dependencies. Try 'apt-get -f install' with no packages (or specify a solution).

I then tried to install libpisync0 and got the following error:

Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
Suggested packages:
  gnome-pilot
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  libpisync0
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 2 not upgraded.
1 not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 13.4kB of archives.
After unpacking 65.5kB of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 ftp://ftp.us.debian.org unstable/main libpisync0 0.11.8-7 [13.4kB]
Fetched 13.4kB in 1s (10.9kB/s)
(Reading database ... 50062 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking libpisync0 (from .../libpisync0_0.11.8-7_i386.deb) ...
dpkg: error processing
/var/cache/apt/archives/libpisync0_0.11.8-7_i386.deb (--unpack):
 trying to overwrite `/usr/lib/libpisync.so.0', which is also in package
libpisock8
Errors were encountered while processing:
 /var/cache/apt/archives/libpisync0_0.11.8-7_i386.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

I get the same error when I run "apt-get -f install" (since it again
wants to install pibpisync0).

I think that it's obvious that Evolution has no unmet dependencies,
since I'm using it right now to write this e-mail!  So what could be
going on?

I have no desire to revert to GNOME 1.4; for one thing, cut-and-paste
between applications works correctly now (and so I did not have to
manually re-type all of the apt-get output as before)!